“Neither did you,” I said. “I’m not really hungry, but you ought to eat something. Anyway, I promised Quinn I’d call him when we got here. I’m sure we’ll grab a bite to eat together.”
“Quinn,” he said. “You have not spoken much about him. Is everything all right between the two of you?”
“Of course it is. Why would you even ask?”
“He has been gone awhile, hasn’t he?”
“He’s coming back, Pépé. Don’t worry about it, okay? He’s just taking a break to sort out the sale of his mother’s house. I don’t know why everyone is making such a big deal about him being gone for a few months.”
I shouldn’t have snapped at him, or sounded so defensive.
“I apologize,” my grandfather said with stiff formality. “But it wasn’t ‘a big deal.’ Merely a question.”
I laid my head on his shoulder. “I know and I’m sorry for being an idiot. I shouldn’t take my frustrations out on you.”
“It’s all right.” He stroked my hair. “No apology necessary. But I guess you really ought to call him now, non?”
I nodded, still feeling guilty, and went to get my phone, accidentally dialing Kit. I punched End Call before it rang, took a deep breath, and called Quinn’s number.
Before I saw him later today, I needed to get my head screwed on right.
Quinn’s phone went to voice mail. I left a message that I was in town and tried not to let my disappointment show. Pépé, who hadn’t gone to sleep after all and had ordered nothing more than a pot of coffee from room service, finally told me in the nicest possible way to quit wearing a path in the carpet and suggested maybe I ought to be the one to take a nap. Or pour myself a good strong drink from the minibar. I glanced at my watch. Eleven thirty here, two thirty in the afternoon at home. Was Quinn still helping out his friend at his vineyard? On a Sunday morning?
My phone rang fifteen minutes later and I pounced on it.
“Hey,” Quinn said, “what’d you do, take the red-eye?”
“No.” My heart was pinging like a small hammer against my rib cage and I felt light-headed. “Nonstop that left Dulles at dawn.”
“Huh. That was fast. Where are you staying?”
“The Mark Hopkins.”
He whistled. “Nice, veeerrrry nice.”
“It is nice,” I said. “The view is to die for.”
“Great. So what are your plans?”
“Oh, nothing. Just … uh … getting settled.”
“You up for a cup of coffee, maybe something to eat? Or you want to relax at your swanky hotel first?”
“I’d love to get something to eat. And some coffee.”
“All right, how about the Buena Vista? Best coffee in town. It’s dead easy for you to get there from the hotel.”
“Sounds lovely. Is it a famous coffee shop?”
He chuckled. “Oh, boy. This is gonna be fun. You’re not in Kansas anymore, sweetheart. You’ll find out when you get here.”
“Real funny, Toto. Just give me directions and I’ll meet you, okay?”
“The full San Francisco experience. Cable car. It’s the fastest way. Your stop is about a three-minute walk from the hotel. Walk down California to Powell and take the Powell and Hyde line to Beach Street. You get off at the last stop, Fisherman’s Wharf. Any farther and you’re in the water. The Buena Vista will be on your left, corner of Hyde and Beach. It’ll take you about twenty minutes tops, unless you have a long wait for a cable car.”
I scribbled down his directions on a hotel phone pad as fast as he gave them. “What time?”
“How about twelve thirty? Actually, better make it twelve forty-five. I’ll wait for you outside. Or you wait for me.”
He hung up as Pépé walked over and stood in the doorway between our rooms. “Everything okay?”
“I’m meeting Quinn at a coffee shop. A place called the Buena Vista.”
Pépé’s eyes lit up. “Ah, the Buena Vista. I haven’t been there for years.”
“You know it, too?”
“Of course. It’s a San Francisco icon.”
“What exactly is it?”
He grinned and said, in the same teasing voice as Quinn, “You’ll find out when you get there.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m taking a shower.”
Twenty minutes later I knocked on Pépé’s door and told him I was leaving. He was sitting at a large desk in front of the picture window, coffee growing cold, papers spread out around him and fanned out on the floor. Apparently he’d gotten a second wind. The papers looked like his talk for the Bohemian Grove. I went over and dropped a kiss on the top of his head.
“I’ll be back later this afternoon. I’m not sure when. See you for dinner?”
“If not dinner, at least for a martini at the Top of the Mark.”
“I don’t drink martinis.”
“You do at the Top of the Mark, ma chère. Everyone does.” He set down his pen. He still wrote all his speeches and correspondence with a Montblanc fountain pen that he’d used for years. My mother had given it to him. “I’ve phoned Robert Sanábria. He’s in town, so he and I might meet somewhere for lunch or a drink. I promise not to be back too late.”
I grinned. It would be just like my octogenarian grandfather to be out on the town hours after I got back to the hotel, outlasting his much younger granddaughter and breezing into the room, ready for martinis at the Top of the Mark whatever the hour.
“You’re such a party animal,” I said.
He chuckled, looking pleased with himself. “You’re just saying that.”
I got the last seat on an outdoor wooden bench facing the street when the dark-green-and-red cable car stopped on Powell Street ten minutes later. The conductor rang the bell, and I felt a giddy, manic thrill as we climbed Nob Hill then up and over Pacific Heights before plunging down the roller-coaster-steep street toward the water. There seemed to be no limit to the number of passengers the conductor was prepared to take on until, finally, the old-fashioned car was packed inside and out with people hanging on to the running board grab bars like barnacles on a ship. I glanced over my shoulder at the grip man inside the car, who flashed a practiced don’t-worry grin and pulled hard on the long cable handle. More people hopped on than jumped off, until finally the conductor tugged the bell and we continued our downward dive toward Fisherman’s Wharf.
I got off at the corner of Hyde and Beach, as Quinn had instructed, and watched the two men manually rotate the wooden car on a large turntable—like a lazy Susan built into the street—so it could grind its way back up the hill. Above an olive drab brick building across the street a red neon sign read THE BUENA VISTA.
Quinn wasn’t among the people milling in front of the restaurant, but I caught sight of him, the familiar way he ducked his head and balled his hands as he sprinted across Beach Street with the easy grace of an athlete. His curly salt-and-pepper hair, so long it was over his ears last time I saw him, was nearly as short as Bobby’s. He pulled off his sunglasses and scanned the crowd, grinning and waving when he caught sight of me. I waved back, smiled, and prayed he wouldn’t notice how nervous I was.
Until this moment I hadn’t wanted to imagine our reunion, whether it would be stilted or awkward or, worst of all, excruciatingly polite and formal after our painful goodbye in my bedroom that April morning. But he pulled me to him in a swift, fierce embrace, and my arms automatically went around his neck gripping him tight. We stayed locked like that for a long time without speaking, clinging to each other in the middle of the sidewalk, as the crowd brushed past us.
Finally he said in my ear, “I can’t believe you’re in San Francisco. It’s great to see you. You look terrific, Lucie.”
He stepped back and I let go of his neck. He was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt—he owned a closetful of them, even collected them—and jeans. I knew every one of his shirts; this one—sage green with blue and tobacco-colored palm fronds and coconut shell buttons—was new.